From Above: Photographs by Adriel Heisey at Phoenix Sky Harbor

Photographer Adriel Heisey steering his ultra-light aircraft, with his right leg strapped to the control stick while he captures aerial images with his camera.

It's hard to beat a birds-eye view of the landscape and the structures assembled on it simply for the context of how everything fits together.

Pilot and photographer Adriel Heisey has been flying across the southwest for nearly 30 years, casting his view upon a plethora of prehistoric ruins and ancient archeological sites and marveling at how everything--land, buildings and ancient people--fit together.

Eventually, Heisey built his own ultra-light plane so he could photograph these places.

"As I flew over the southwest since 1984 I've had this unparalleled opportunity to examine the landscape in a way few people get too," he explains from his Gallup, New Mexico home. "I fly over it every day relatively low, compared to how most people fly, and relatively slow compared to being in an airliner. That leaves me lots of time to study, think and feel. That's kind of the origin of my photography."

A pilot flying for the Navajo tribal government ("Kind of like Air Force One for the Navajo Nation," he says.), Heisey's photographs are currently on display at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and Phoenix Deer Valley Airport.

"From Above: Photographs by Adriel Heisey," in partnership with Archaeology Southwest, a private nonprofit organization in Tucson that explores and protects ancient sites in North America, can be viewed in Sky Harbor Terminal 2 through June 2 and in Terminal 4, level 3 through July 21. The Deer Valley images will be up through June 2.